
Traci, my traveling companion of the day, was taking me across a portion of western Tennessee to hound out some story ideas. We were on our way to Humboldt and scouting out a good place to have lunch once we were done with our business there. We’d already passed through Belz and the pickings had looked slim. A scattering of closed businesses and convenience stores had been the only signs of consumables on the road since, and we were chatting about how good barbecue restaurants usually look pretty ragged.

“It does,” Traci agreed. But then - “hey, there’s smoke coming out.”
And sure enough there was, a plume of smoke from a chimney on the back side of the lean-to, a little building pressed up against that boarded building with a sign out front that said Sam‘s Bar-B-Q. “That might be some of the best barbecue we’ve ever tried,” I told her.
“You want to go back?”
“Maybe. Let’s see what else there is.”
Since we were running early, we rolled around town a bit. Saw a place right up the road called Armour BBQ, and there was a little ribs-and-catfish place downtown. We took Highway 79 on to the north past downtown and saw a place called Sip of Suds, which we both instantly thought must be a Laundromat but which turned out to be a bar. There were a lot of grills -- Humboldt Grill, T-Baby’s Bar and Grill, the East End Grill. But nothing really caught our fancy.
We ended up asking folks at the West Tennessee Regional Arts Center about their selections for restaurants in the area. Outright, I asked Bill Hickerson with the Center what he thought about Sam’s. “It’s barbecue. It’s good,” was his response. Not much more. Apparently the only real way to get the real story on Sam’s was to stop in.

And what a tiny room it was. The entire space wasn’t much larger than my bedroom at home. A counter and register divided the area in two; on the road side, two tables and five chairs shared space with a bun rack and a refrigerated drink and pie cooler. On the other, a refrigerator hunched under a big fan.

There was no printed menu, just a wipeboard that had been wiped and reused over and over again. Traci and I counted up the cash we had; this was obviously a place that didn’t accept plastic. She had eight bucks; I had about $15 of quarters in a pouch, a practical joke from my husband who decided he’d more than literally follow directions.
The board was full of items that were tasty. As we looked through, the lady behind the counter told us “now, our pork sandwich, that’s the best.”
Traci looked back at her and told her “well, we can’t do pork, but what else is good?”
“It’s all good, all good,” she told us.


A blue collar guy came in and stood at the counter, waiting for our hostess to come back. He told us he’d been coming there as long as he could remember, but he couldn’t pin a date on the origin of the place. Another guy, an older man, also came in and started telling us that this was Sam’s but it wasn’t -- that the original Sam was in an assisted living facility, and that even the original Sam wasn’t the original guy on the sign. I had to go back later and do research, and I found a few things out.

In 2007 Sam finally retired at the ripe old age of 87. He handed down the business to his son-in-law John, who also goes by the name “Sam.” John (we’ll refer to him this way just to eliminate the confusion) has added a few menu items like those homemade rolls and sides and pies that he makes himself. We didn’t get to meet John while we weren’t there, but we did have a pretty good idea of what sort of history went into this place.
Our hostess came back through the door with two paper sacks. “This one,” she told us, “this is the beef brisket and th’other’n’s the chicken. Y’all sure you don’t want anything else?”
“Kat, I saw you eyeballing that pie,” Traci goaded me.
“It looks good.”
“What sorts do you have?” Traci asked.

I was digging out quarters to shore up our $8.31 ticket for our two sandwiches. “How much is the pie?”
“It’s a dollar 65 -- it’d be a dollar 89 with the tax.”
“Fair enough.” I dug around for more change and handed it to Traci, who handed it over to our cashier.
“What do you want?”
“Chocolate chess.”
“It’s real good,” our hostess told us as she turned to the stovetop and cut out a slice. “He comes in and makes it every day.”
“Who does?” I asked.
“Sam. He makes all the food.”
“All right then.”


Well, that wasn’t going to do. I lifted the bread off the top and tugged a little at the leg bone -- and all three of the bones in the quarter just came out. It was as if I had pulled a loose seam and all the stuffing had come out. I was left with a messy pile of pink smoked chicken inside a little skin on that slice of bread. I managed to get it up under the bread and dab a little sauce on it before I cut it off and slid half over to Traci.
The barbecue beef she’d opened was a big wet pile of thick cut and sliced brisket, with plenty of visible marbling. It was served up on a big yellow bun and looked like a cardiologist’s nightmare. Or, as I’d put it, damn good barbecue.


Part of that was the sauce, which was a vinegar based sauce heavy on the black pepper and clouded with a whole lot of other spices. There wasn’t any sweetness to it, just the tang and the bit of heat from that pepper and not much else. But it was the perfect sauce for that hickory wood smoker. It made the white bread taste sweet and the chicken taste meatier.


We had places to go and things to do -- our next stop was the Alex Haley home in Henning, a good bit of a drive from Humboldt. So we had to go. But that’s fine.

You too can find Sam’s Bar-B-Que. Take Highway 79 up from the interstate at Brownsville -- it’s on the right as you enter Humboldt. The restaurant is open from ten to six every day except Sunday, when it’s open from noon until four. I bet they’d take a phone order, too -- (731) 784-9850. And chances are this is as close as you’re going to get to a business website.
I do miss Arkansas and Tennessee BBQ.
ReplyDeleteSo, we just did it ourselves recently. It was fantastic. Brisket and longaniza sausages.
Saludos desde México;
Don Cuevas (former Mountain View and Little Rock resident)